DSpace Collection:http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/53832015-03-31T20:56:41Z2015-03-31T20:56:41ZShifting prisms of China : U.S. correspondents as an interpretive community, 1972-2000Song, Yunya (宋韻雅)http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/69222013-06-13T02:35:59Z2012-01-01T00:00:00ZTitle: Shifting prisms of China : U.S. correspondents as an interpretive community, 1972-2000
Authors: Song, Yunya (宋韻雅)
Abstract: ﻿U.S. media coverage of China is determined not only by what is happening in China, but also by what is happening in the U.S. and what is happening to the U.S.-China relations. This study seeks to relate the analysis of U.S. media texts to the contextual changes of China, the U.S. and bilateral relations from 1972 to 2000. American media perceptions of China have traditionally alternated between distaste and adulation. After President Nixon's landmark visit to China in 1972, the U.S. press corps has experienced another pendulum swing. Absent the "I" of authors in news reports as an "objectivity" code, little if anything could be learned about the change or continuity of the journalists' attitudes and beliefs from the media texts themselves.
As such, this study probes into the books penned by these reporters, attempting to examine the self-reflexive dimension in "China Assignment" and explain the "pendulum swing" with an "interpretive community" approach that patterns many of their prisms. Specifically, this study asks: (1) what "myth structures" does the U.S. press corps invoke to forge their prisms of China as an interpretive community? (2) If the pendulum swing also characterizes these reporters' prisms of China in their books, how does such a tendency relate to their preconceptions and local contacts? (3) What are the nuances and variations in each swing of this pendulum, and to what extent do they relate to the international context of Cold War, U.S.-China relations, transformations in China, domestic perceptions of China in the U.S., the ideological persuasion of media organizations, and individual judgment values?
This thesis argues that the ability to apply a journalistic interpretation of occurrences in China correspondence will vary by the scope and depth of their contacts in China, which, in turn, will be mediated by their preconceptions grounded in U.S. domestic perceptions of China. My investigation proceeds at two stages: (1) patterned relations among the authors, the people, and institutions are extracted to draw the reporters' contacts. (2) I will use Gamson and Modigliani's (1989) "constructionist approach to discourse analysis" to distill "ideological packages" of their prisms.
This study concludes that there emerge three meta-narratives in these books from 1972 to 2000: "the virtuous New China" (1972-1979), "the promising going-capitalist China" (1979-1989), and "the ironic rising China" (1989-2000). The inscription and unlearning of these mythic categories have testified to the pendulum principle. The polarized reversal has much to do with the reporters' persistent tendency to carry preconceptions that wished for empirical verification, and there remains a propensity to make sweeping moral judgments in light of such "enduring values" as "freedom," "justice," and "individualism." Their preconceptions echo the rise and fall of institutional authority and public cynicism when facing such critical incidents as the withdrawal from the Vietnam War and the end of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the pendulum is partly the result of limited liberalization in China. From the Mao era to Deng's reform era, China has been undergoing tremendous transformations during the historically most dynamic 1980s and in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident. Throughout, a systematic discourse analysis shows that the U.S. press corps adapts the mythic formula partly from the fluctuating Chinese officials' interpretations, and partly from the shifting available contacts in the field. These journalistic accounts- which are often Beijing-oriented and written from the viewpoint of a particular segment of Chinese population-are nevertheless not representative of "China's reality.
Notes: CityU Call Number: PN4888.C54 S66 2012; vi, 267 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-267)2012-01-01T00:00:00ZStardom in the view of media power : reproduction of media power in the case of Li YuchunCui, Li (崔麗)http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/69212013-06-13T02:35:57Z2012-01-01T00:00:00ZTitle: Stardom in the view of media power : reproduction of media power in the case of Li Yuchun
Authors: Cui, Li (崔麗)
Abstract: ﻿The purpose of this study is to examine the stardom of Li Yuchun, a star from Super Girls' Voice (an American Idol-type show), which in 2005 was one of the most successful television entertainment programs in China, in the view of media power. Based on Couldry's (2000) framework of media power, which focus on the symbolic boundary between the media world and the ordinary world, this study attempts to explore how audiences of ordinary people and media people, respectively, construct the stardom of Li Yuchun, how she became well-known with the support of audience votes, and whether the constructions of the audience and that of media people vary. Moreover, the questions of whether the symbolic boundary between the media world and the ordinary has been maintained in the case of Li Yuchun' stardom, and whether the media or the audience represent the main supporter of this boundary also will be explored. The difference between Li Yuchun and other stars from talent shows, and other stars made in traditional ways, and its implications for the Chinese entertainment industry and popular culture, will be discussed as well.
Notes: CityU Call Number: P94.5.C452 C65 2012; iv, 234 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-231)2012-01-01T00:00:00ZGrowth model of online friendship and individual, dyadic, and network determinantsZhang, Lun ( 張倫)http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/65052012-08-07T07:43:20Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZTitle: Growth model of online friendship and individual, dyadic, and network determinants
Authors: Zhang, Lun ( 張倫)
Abstract: ﻿The online social networking sites (SNSs), which have rocketed from technique engaging
niche users into a dominant online communication platform engaging millions of users, may
change the pattern of online interpersonal communication. The study found that dyadic
characteristics and structural factors largely determined the behavior of friendship formation,
rather than characteristics of users.
The data of the current study are collected from one of the largest SNS platforms in
China, coving the first two years (2006-07) since its inception, during which time most users of
the SNS were college students. The dataset records an anonym zed ID, demographic
characteristics, a list of bidirectional friends and the time of the friendship formation. In total, 10
million users and 200 million bidirectional ties are involved.
Using polynomial logistic regression to fit the time path of friendship formation for each
individual user, the study finds that the increase in the number of friends for each user typically
follows a Logistic function with time, indicating that the growth of friends starts slowly at the
beginning, speeds up rapidly after reaching a critical point, and then tapers off finally. More
importantly, the trajectories appear uniformly, if not identically, across individuals who joined
the social network at quite different points in time, suggesting a high degree of regularity in user
behavior when forming friendship.
This study further examines the growth trajectory of friendship of the entire SNS, and
compares the resulting of global-level trajectory with the individual-level trajectories.
Surprisingly, there emerges a strong self-similarity in the growth of friendship between the individual level and the global level, which reinforces the regularity of social friendship
formation behavior.
Although users show a similar time path of adding friends, there are substantial
differences across individuals in the sheer size of their friendship networks. As the second
research objective, the study examines the effects of three sets of factors, including
characteristics of network structure, characteristics of dyadic friendship, and characteristics of
individual users, on the likelihood of the friendship formation.
Of the factors under study, Balance Structure and the Cohesiveness of User's Ego
Network (which involves the user as the "ego-center" and only directly-related friends as other
members of the network) are the two most dominant factors influencing the tie formation.
Contrary to the prevailing theory of "Preferential Attachment" in the previous literature,
friendship formation is positively related to Homophily of Degree (i.e, number of friends), which
means that people make friends with similar (rather than famous) others. In addition, the
Popularity of the user and his/her Experience with using the SNS has a negative effect on
friendship formation, i.e., users with higher popularity or longer SNS using history are less likely
to add new friends. Likewise, Homophily of Experience has also a negative effect on friendship
formation in that users become increasingly inclined to establish friendship with those with
different duration of experience with the SNS (i.e., veteran users are more likely to add new
comers whereas new comers more likely to team up with veterans), which suggests that
friendship formation is a dynamic process throughout which users change their friendship
strategies over time. Finally, individual characteristics, such as Sex and level of online Self-Disclosure, do not have any significant effect on the tie formation, which in fact strengthens the
importance of structural factors reported above.
The findings of structural effects on friendship formation sheds some lights on social
media marketing in the sense that online marketers could choose marketing information initiators
according to users network positions, rather than users SNS usage frequency or motivation. In
addition, this study also has some practical implications on SNS operators. Considering the
strategy of retaining user loyalty, SNS operators should focused more on the friendship
maintenance, such as encouraging the creation of user generated contents and developing tools to
facilitate information sharing, rather than simply encouraging friendship formation since most
users will stop adding new friends after they reach their saturation point.
Notes: CityU Call Number: HM742 .Z44 2011; x, 181 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-135)2011-01-01T00:00:00ZManufacturing professional honor : journalism award institution as social control in ChinaHuang, Shunming ( 黃順銘)http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/65042012-08-07T07:43:18Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZTitle: Manufacturing professional honor : journalism award institution as social control in China
Authors: Huang, Shunming ( 黃順銘)
Abstract: ﻿This dissertation investigates China‟s journalism award institution and its practice from the perspective of social control. It makes a central argument that the party-state enacts social control over news people by manufacturing journalism awards within the institutional framework of state corporatism. State corporatism explains the top-down control over official journalism awards, characterized by the strong vertical interactions (between peak organizations and their local members) on the one hand, and the weak or even lack of horizontal interactions (among local professional organizations at the same levels) on the other.
The argument is elaborated as six dimensions: institutionalization, historical icon, opportunity structure, gatekeeping, ritual, and professional elites. Chapter 2 traces the history in which journalism awards were established as a formal institution of professional honor at the turn of the 1980s, alongside social transformation from the Maoist to post-Mao era. The clampdown on the democracy movement in 1989 marked a watershed, witnessing the tightening of control. Chapter 3 investigates how certain journalists were iconized as journalism awards. By placing these icons back into the historical contexts, the chapter uncovers the vicissitudes of their living and posthumous reputations, and their posthumous images constructed by the collective memory. Present-day news people neither identify uncritically with officially designated icons nor accept official professional interpellations at face value. Chapter 4 shows that official journalism awards have invented a set of institutional mechanisms to shape and manage the opportunities of professional honors, resulting in a particularistic type of opportunity structure. Chapter 5 performs a preliminary analysis of the gatekeeping practice. The judges sitting on the award committees are typically power-oriented and produce symbolic orders of honor that satisfy the propaganda authorities. Chapter 6 examines the ritual of official and non-official award ceremonies. Chapter 7 paints a quantitative portrait of the Changjiang & Taofen Award winners. Chapter 8 summarizes four basic social-control functions of journalism awards: indexing, purification, demonstration effect, and co-optation. It also reflects on three sets of relations revolving around journalism awards, to wit, press control and honorary control, journalism awards and journalistic excellence, and journalism award and media marketization.
In sum, official journalism awards in China represent a state-corporatist model of professional honors, distinctive sharply from such professional-community models as the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Academy Award.
Notes: CityU Call Number: PN5367.A87 H83 2011; viii, 220 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-220)2011-01-01T00:00:00Z